Absolutely awful. It appears that a handling line got caught up in one of the propane hoses which at first glance, reads as if there was something fundamentally wrong with the way the rig was assembled or how the flight was conducted.
Alaa Mahmoud, a sales manager for another local balloon company, Magic Horizon,
told the Guardian newspaper that the accident happened as crews tried to anchor the balloon to the ground using ropes hanging from the basket. The ropes became entangled in the tubes leading to the gas cylinder and severed them, after which the gas was ignited, he added.
This should not happen under any circumstances. Those hoses should be exposed for the shortest possible distance before being fed up to the load frame in which the burner assembly sits by shrouding them in the padding that wraps around the load wires and the polythene uprights that supports the load frame while the basket is on the ground. Any "slack" should be tucked away where nobody can grab hold of it. The pre-flight briefing should be very direct, thorough and cover what to hold and what not to hold.
The pilot academic qualifications for flying balloons is comparable to those for PPL and in the case of a commercial operation such as this, CPL. They are quite challenging and in the UK at least, there is a significant overlap in the syllabuses for air law, meteorology, human factors etc. Much of it is identical. I and about a dozen other pilots sat our exams over a weekend at a well known manufacturer and was invigilated by one of the biggest names in the business. There was an Egyptian chap who had travelled to the UK for his exams. By the end of the weekend, most of us had passed everything first time and a few individuals had single re-sits to take at a future date. The Egyptian gentleman didn't pass one.
The use of a handling line to control the direction of a balloon on landing is very much reserved for light conditions as a balloon, especially one that was probably around 300,000 cubic feet, has a huge amount of momentum. It also has the surface area of a very large racing yacht. The risk of injury to the ground handling crew is significant and the handling line should only be used to move a balloon clear of trees, fences etc. A good pilot never puts himself in that situation, especially a commercial one. It's far better to land the thing properly and walk across fields, even if the landing is firm or fast.